The American company begins to build data centers on the water in the form of data barges

Artist's Dream for a Data Center on Water

Nautilus Data Technologies (NDT) announced the successful completion of testing a prototype of a floating data center. As conceived by the inventors, the center uses ocean water to cool servers. The prototype of the center built on a barge has proved its worth, and now the company is starting to build real centers.

The idea of ​​building a floating data center does not leave Internet companies. In fact, here you have both the free energy of the waves (you can add solar panels if necessary), and a ready-made, almost limitless environment for cooling servers. And you can wonderful sail away from the coast and get out of the jurisdiction of any country. Therefore, the idea of ​​NDT is far from new.

The Good Corporation itself, Google, back in 2008registered a patent for a floating data center. The online community was greatly encouraged when in 2013 rumors leaked to the press about who the corporation really began to build its project. True, then it turned out that two barges with strange constructions are just marketing premises for advertising Google Glass points. And they never built a floating data center.


A fragment of the

Startup International Data Security patent also boldly went where the provider’s foot had not set foot, and loudly announced its idea to build a fleet of ships that should be snugly located in the San Francisco Bay. According to the innovators, the idea came to them in the same 2008 - as often happens, the idea was in the air.

IDS was founded by Richard Naughton, a former fleet admiral who often dealt with ship IT systems during his service. According to his idea, for floating centers it was necessary to use warships that had served their purpose. But, unfortunately, for three years unsuccessfully trying to find financing for their project, IDS as a result went bankrupt.

Nautilus Data Technologies, meanwhile, has already built and tested a test center located on a barge near Mar Island, a US shipyard and naval base located on the western edge of Vallejo, California, which is also close to San Francisco. So far, this is the most successful attempt to implement this idea.

The developers claim that due to the dramatic savings on the cooling system, the cost of hosting in such a center can be reduced by almost 40%. Moreover, in recent years, due to years of drought, the Californian authorities have been looking askance at everyone who spends precious liquid not on the immediate needs of the population. And the floating data center will not need to use water - it will be directly on it.

NDT CEO Arnold Magcale worked with Naughton on the IDS project and claims to have taken into account all the shortcomings of the previous venture. “Our system has been under development for six years,” he says. “IDS wanted to use fleet ships that ended their service with minor alterations. We believe that the use of sea barges will be the most effective approach. Such a barge can be used as lengthening a berth. ”


Data barge

As the NDTs are about to moor their barges right offshore, they will not be able to extract energy from the waves. The only advantage of their ideas is the free cooling of equipment. To do this, seawater will be taken from a shallow depth through a filter that prevents debris and marine animals from entering the system and will pass through pipes into the heat exchanger. NDT pipes are planned to be made of copper and titanium in order to minimize the influence of aggressive salt water.

Judging by the test results, the data center from NDT will not become a giant boiler - on a test barge, the temperature of the water returning to the ocean exceeded the temperature of the outside water by no more than 4 degrees.

Following the trail of the end of a successful test, NDT began construction of a real data center, which is planned to be completed this year. Then the company plans to complete each new barge once every six months. Each barge will be able to contain equipment with a total capacity of 8 MW, and at each of the selected parking lots there will be up to 5 such barges. The company has already begun preliminary sales of its services, and the main fear is that one of the potential customers will not risk placing their server facilities on the water.